Mapping Radical Milwaukee

For nearly half a century, Milwaukee was governed by a trifecta of socialist mayors and was home to one of the most robust and accomplished socialist movements in the country. The history of municipal socialism in Milwaukee has received considerable scholarly attention, and the historical legacy of this socialist movement is ever-present in the urban landscape and built environment; one need only look to the public parks system, for example, to see the impact municipal socialism had on shaping the terrain we interact with every day.

Less known, however, is that twentieth-century Milwaukee was also home to other radical movements and tendencies, like communism and anarchism. This project, then, in identifying and mapping a handful of sites representative of the social, political, and cultural worlds of Milwaukee’s various radicalisms and placing those sites in their historical contexts, seeks to answer how these other radicalisms laid claim to public space and how we can read the urban landscape for traces of this disappeared past.

In recovering and reconstructing the social, political, and cultural worlds of Milwaukee radicalisms, this project aims to uncover alternative narratives about Milwaukee’s past to allow us, however fleetingly, to reinhabit those disappeared worlds in the hopes of imagining alternative futures.

The first portion of this project is a virtual walking tour of sorts through the twentieth-century history of Milwaukee radicalism, which seeks to raise to the surface the ways in which these submerged and subjugated histories laid claim to public space and worked to transform the social fabric of the city.

The second and final portion of this project is a reconstruction of the route of the 1930 'May Day' march of the Milwaukee Communist Party's Unemployed Council, which was repeated in altered forms throughout the early 1930s. We have singled out this development, of which the 1930 'May Day' march is only a single example, as a particularly dramatic and sustained claim to the public space of the city made by radicals in twentieth-century Milwaukee.

We will end by advancing a number of conclusions that can be drawn from this research, including proposing a potential link between the suppression and marginalization of radicalism during the Red Scare(s) and processes of erasure in the built environment, as well as by underlining the need for future research to more deeply probe the politics of the built environment, historic preservation, and the urban landscape as it relates to radical movements.

This project draws heavily from  Ani Mukherji's groundbreaking research on Milwaukee's Communist Party , as well as from the  archives of the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel . The  1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps for Milwaukee  were used to provide some sense of the historic location for the sites discussed within this project, and historic photographs from the digital photo archives of the  Wisconsin Historical Society ,  Milwaukee County Historical Society , and  Milwaukee Public Library  were included whenever relevant digitized photos could be located. Various other primary and secondary sources have also been consulted. Abbreviated in-text citations, including links to any digital resources, are included throughout the project.

As discussed in the first portion of this project, the Milwaukee CP maintained a highly visible presence in the public space and urban landscape of the city during the Depression era through its Unemployed Councils.

One particularly dramatic aspect of this public presence were routine marches through the streets of Milwaukee which functioned as "a demonstration and protest against unemployment and for social equality, a five-day week, a seven-hour day and working class solidarity" ("Hoan Permits 'Red' May Day," Milwaukee Journal, Apr. 28, 1930). As evidence of the sustained presence of the Milwaukee CP within the urban landscape, these marches were commonplace in the early 1930s and followed various routes, often attracting thousands of marchers as well as onlookers ("'Reds' Hold March; Girl of 20 Arrested," Milwaukee Sentinel, Sep. 2, 1930). A march in September of 1930 was, according to the Sentinel, "led by a six piece Negro band," a testament to the emphasis the Milwaukee CP placed on presenting a diverse and inclusive front ("'Reds' Hold March; Girl of 20 Arrested," Milwaukee Sentinel, Sep. 2, 1930). As Ani Mukherji puts it in " Reds Among the Sewer Socialists and McCarthyites ," "In Milwaukee, as elsewhere, the Party was a heterogeneous formation that united immigrant nationalists, bohemians, the unemployed, factory workers, Black radicals, and feminist activists under a common umbrella of anti-capitalism" ( Mukherji, 114 ).

Below is a reconstruction of the route Milwaukee's communists took on 'May Day' of 1930—exactly 90 years ago today, if you're viewing this on May Day, 2020—placed over a present-day satellite map of downtown Milwaukee. Note the obstructions to the route posed by the Fiserv Forum, Panther Arena, freeway construction, and other downtown developments.

As the Journal explained a couple days ahead of the 1930 May Day march, "The parade will start at 2 p.m. Thursday [May 1, 1930] at Haymarket square, Fifth and Vliet sts., and will follow this route: South on Fifth st. to Kilbourn av., east to Milwaukee st., south to Menomonee st., east to Jackson st., north to Wisconsin av. and east on Wisconsin av. to Juneau park ... As the communists outlined their plans, the marchers will disperse on the Juneau park plaza" ("Hoan Permits 'Red' May Day, Milwaukee Journal, Apr. 28, 1930).

90 years ago, Milwaukee's communists dispersed at the Juneau park plaza; today, we'll disperse here, after a brief discussion of some of the conclusions that can be drawn from this project.

An exploration of the history of the Milwaukee Communist Party and the city's other radicalisms through the lenses of public space, the urban landscape, and the built environment raises important questions about the politics of the built environment and historic preservation as they relate to radical movements, and leads us to valuable conclusions about the nature of twentieth-century radicalism as well as the possibilities for our present moment.

A spatial history of twentieth-century Milwaukee's various radicalisms allows us to trace the rise and fall of these movements. Not only, then, can we read the landscape for traces of our city's disappeared radical past, but this project suggests that the erasure and disappearance of radical movements can also be traced in the contours of the built environment and urban landscape.

Radicals' claims to public space reached their peak at the height of the Milwaukee CP in the 1930s and 40s, dramatized most powerfully in the sustained and public presence of the CP's Unemployed Councils within the urban landscape. The Red Scare(s), anti-radical hysteria, and the Cold War took their toll on Milwaukee's various radicalisms, however, as campaigns of repression ensured that radical movements were able to maintain only a transient presence in the urban landscape; this presence was full of contingencies and never assured. It was always a battle to maintain a public presence and yet, to a remarkable degree, radical movements in Milwaukee defied the obstacles arrayed against them and maintained a visible, and viable, presence on the urban scene.

This project, then, underlines that the urban environment was a realm of both possibility and potential danger for radicals. It was in the public space of the city that, as Ani Mukherji has written, radicals found their greatest successes, but it was also where they were most vulnerable to repression and harassment ( Mukherji, 126 ).

A spatial history of twentieth-century radicalism also illustrates the extent to which post-World War II freeway construction, urban renewal projects, and downtown development eviscerated local radical movements. The disappearance, or the erasure, of radicalism from the urban landscape and built environment has also jeopardized the place of these movements in our historical memory. This project, then, calls for further study into the ways in which radical movements might have been among the constituencies to which post-World War II urban developments were disproportionately destructive.

In the aftermath of the Civil War,  as Reiko Hillyer has demonstrated in Designing Dixie , the built environment of the South was transformed in order to promote a narrative of reconciliation in the hopes of luring northern investment. Did the anti-radical, business-friendly administrations which pursued urban renewal and freeway construction projects in the immediate aftermath of the Second Red Scare and during and after the Cold War undertake a similar campaign to transform the built environment to align with their specific political agenda?

This project—which we intend to deepen and expand on over the course of the summer—points toward a need to broaden current understandings of the repression and marginalization of radical movements as a development which takes place strictly in the political realm. It is our contention that perhaps these processes of erasure did not take place only on a political level, rendering the CP and other radicalisms more or less impotent as a political force by the late twentieth century, but that these processes have also made themselves visible—by rendering radicalism invisible—in the built environment, and that this itself has been a political struggle. Although the first iteration of this project has by no means answered these questions or demonstrated the existence of a concerted campaign by city leaders to reshape the urban landscape to the disadvantage of communists and other radicals, it does underline the need to center questions of the politics of the built environment and historic preservation in studies of radical movements.

Of course, the nature of the modern urban landscape is fast-paced change and upheaval. It is to be expected, then, that buildings come and go and that certain aspects of our city’s past fade into obscurity. It might also be true that the devastation wrought by urban renewal programs, freeway construction, and downtown development was simply indiscriminate. We should not, however, discount a potential link between political campaigns of repression against radicals and radicalism and the erasure of radicalism from the urban landscape and built environment.

That these historic spaces of radicalism have been more or less disappeared is a matter of fact. This spatial history, however, opens a window onto the disappeared worlds of Milwaukee's various radicalisms and reminds us that the historical legacy of twentieth-century radicalism in Milwaukee is waiting to be reactivated and built upon from our standpoint in the twenty-first century.